Yo dawg, I heard you like years in yo scotch

Now I can’t decide if getting tanked before going to see Watchmen would make it better or worse.

This doesn’t make explicit sense – it is a stupid thing to feel guilty about, for one, and for another, who cares? and thirdly, so what if someone wants to watch that even if I don’t – but it happens every time. I think it is because I am so anti-celebrity-worship.

I feel weirdly conflicted about it because I am a fan of television, and I think that people who take pride in not owning a TV or not watching a TV are brain racists. There’s some very good stuff happening on TV. There’s plenty of bad stuff, admittedly, but the television series has been elevated in the last ten years to a level that matches or exceeds most films.

Being sick over the last few days means I’ve consumed a bunch of television, and I think there are some shows that you should start watching if you aren’t already.

Mad Men: I’m halfway through the first season, and it makes me wish I had skipped politics for advertising. And been my age in 1961. The writing is pretty good and the characters are great. It earns plenty of cool factor for the period setting, and the production quality puts you right into the story.

I don’t know why people say that this show is killing the pocket square. The theme music and opening sequence is boss.

24: I have, in the past, been accosted by liberals for wearing a shirt Diana got me a few years ago that says “JACK BAUER FOR PRESIDENT.” This was at the height of the torture news breaking during the Bush administration and I was called, in not so many words, a tool for Republican propaganda.

Yes, I know 24 is on Fox and yes, I know Jack Bauer shreds the Geneva conventions and federal and international law in his efforts to save the country and beat the bad guys. And I don’t care. Jack Bauer isn’t real and his decisions always advance the story towards saving the world, so I don’t face any moral conflict in cheering him on as he strips wires and breaks fingers. If it were a documentary I’d be horrified, but since it is not I root for Jack and against Red Foreman’s stupid Senate subcommittee.

Because watching 24 can essentially occur in a moral vacuum, I also don’t mind recommending it as a fun and exciting show to watch with great characters and great research. I hate legal and cop dramas but give me an intelligence community turf war and clutch counterterrorism field work and I can watch for hours. I read an academic article the other day about how RoboCop is ‘fascism for liberals’ or at least fascism that liberals can enjoy in entertainment, and I think 24 works the same way on a certain level.

Flight of the Conchords: Flight of the Conchords is some of the best comedy on TV right now. It is a show about Bret and Jemaine, formerly New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo a capella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo. They are trying to make it in New York. The following is a song about a recent night at the club:

Heroes: If ever there was a show that works as an example of how firing all the writers when things go wrong can save the day, it is Heroes, and the new season is proving it every week.

How I Met Your Mother: Barney. Barney. Forever Barney.

I mean, a show that can make this kind of a self-referential joke about a character?

So awesome. Diana thinks we like this show because it is basically about us, and that is probably true. The characters graduated in 1996 – I graduated in 1997 – and I most resemble Marshall. But sometimes I wish I was Barney and could be awesome all the time, so much so that I engage in impromptu suiting up from to time. Totally worth it.

House: I usually don’t like medical dramas but I liked E.R. before it got dumb. House is not dumb, even if it is more or less the same story every episode. This is another one of those shows that are character-driven rather than plot-driven. It could be totally non-linear and it wouldn’t matter because the character dynamics are so good. It isn’t lupus, and it isn’t myelitis.

So there it is – good shows that are well-written and well-made and that you shouldn’t feel guilty about watching.

Conversely:

Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job is not funny.

I.
When we lived on Bolivar
every neighbor we had was crazy
just like now but less noisy.

One lady saw me putting up Christmas lights
in late November and asked how my
Thanksgiving was. I said fine.

How was yours, I asked.
It was embarassing, she said.
She told me that she was alone.

How was it embarassing if
you were alone, I asked, stringing
ribbon as tinsel from one metal pillar
to another.

Well, she said, my garbage disposal clogged,
and the maintenance man came,
and I had left out my vibrator and an
empty bottle of Southern Comfort by the sink.

I stepped down off the chair.
Is that where you normally keep them, I asked.

II.
When I was barely a teenager,
my brother was home from California.
We were decorating the tree and
my parents were hiding from each other by

checking lights or
balancing the checkbook.

I went to the kitchen for something to drink
and even though I didn’t like orange juice
I yelled into the living room at Jason.

Hey, I shouted. You drank all
the fucking orange juice. He was quiet.
Later, he told me was on acid.

That explained his side of the tree, all right.

III.
What is it about Christmas that makes
me not want to talk about politics.
No one I’ve ever loved has ever left
or died during Christmas.

Except maybe Richard Pryor. Kennedy
ruined Thanksgiving for me before I was even born.

Thanks a lot, guys. Now I’m one of those people.

IV.
My first Christmas back from Berklee
it was all bitter
drinks and hiding from the truth.

The truth is, my parents divorced.

The truth is, I had plans for Boston.

The truth is, I paid for my plane ticket home
by putting Icy Hot on my genitalia
thereby winning a $200 bet.

Recently, I learned a hard lesson. A lesson about boundaries. A lesson, even, about interpersonal communications. A lesson about the dick you can’t take back.

I’m an academic – a political scientist – so I spend a lot of time hanging around with professor types. These are guys who nail editorial cartoons to their office doors that show a guy looking forlorn at a bar, saying “I miss the commies”. They talk politics, they pay attention to the British elections. They teach classes about torture and build software that predicts violent conflict. Almost as a rule, they use the Queen’s English.

So it was a surprise when, several months ago, a faculty member I had befriended referred to a group of people as “a bunch of shitheads.”

My eyes lit up. I think of myself as an intellectual, a cultured young man that is as worldly as he is compassionate and forthright. That being said, I also recognize that in speech I am often a crude, crass bastard when among friends. I’m not sure why, but when I am around my best pals or people I profoundly respect, the conversation is usually peppered with profanity. I find myself speaking the best English when I’m around people I don’t particularly care about one way or another.

This could be a fundamental flaw, built into my personality at a formative time. It is my sincere hope that if I ever work in the White House, I will be able to discuss foreign relations without referring to a country collectively as “a pack of assholes.” The days of Nixon, after all, are over.

So when Dr. Politics broke the swear barrier, I was relieved. Here was someone I could not only talk to about heady things like the Congo’s GNP, but I could also discuss them with the usual peppering of fucks that enrich my most comfortable mode of communication.

Base language and lowbrow references continued for several weeks. I managed to tell a joke about economists eating piles of shit that killed. When I mentioned, during the Schiavo debacle, that it was my sincere opinion that House Republicans could “huff a bag of dongs,” my neology was met with the kind of appreciative chuckle it deserved, even though Dr. Politics is a classic-conservative Republican.

It was not to last. Like all great linguistic movements, my attempt to infuse political discourse with salt-of-the-earth American vulgarity would eventually run into an insurmountable, culturally codified roadblock.

Last week, I was talking to Dr. Politics about an exam I had coming up. We were engaged in the usual good-natured ribbing, so I thought nothing of the following exchange:

Dr. Politics: “Well, I guess you’ll just have to study, won’t you?”

Me: “I know I’ll have to study, dick.”

His face scrunched up and the air between us became thick with partisan discomfort.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “I thought we had a special relationship!”

“Not special enough for you to call me a dick,” he replied.

I had crossed a line and I knew it. I don’t regret saying it, because in my circles, ‘dick’ is a sign of respect, a term of endearment. It also acknowledges a particularly decent burn. Early in my internship at the Dig, Editor Joe Keohane sounded surprised in asking “Wow, you’re from Texas and you know who your father is?”

My reply? “Thanks, dick.” Our professional relationship was immediately cemented, committed to journalistic excellence and forged in a mutual appreciation of ribaldry.

I’m not sure how this could have been avoided. It was a situation we’ve all been in – you reach a level of comfort with someone and then you unwittingly cross some invisible line they have drawn for themselves and never revealed to you.

What then to do? The next time I feel chummy with someone, should I give them a list of words I regularly employ and ask them to underline the ones they find offensive? Would it be more or less comfortable for me to say “Hey, in the future, I plan on calling you a dick in a jocular way. This signifies that I have accepted you as an intellectual equal. Is that okay, or should I call you something else?”

He asked me if I call my wife a bitch, and I said “No, but she calls me a bitch quite often.” He rolled his eyes. What a dick.

That two men serve on a charitable board together – one made up of people from several, disparate backgrounds – in no way marries them ideologically, save for whatever cause the board may serve. On the other hand, being a registered member of a radical political party – say, one that advocates for the secession of Alaska even if violent means are required – is a certain statement of affiliation and shared belief.

But what if you are in the leadership of a group that has radical and virulent ideas? What if you identify so strongly with a radical right wing anti-Semitic group that funds Sandinistas and Central American death squads that you not only join the group but you let them put your name and elected office on their letterhead for several years?

If the results of several years of Republican policies weren’t melting the earth around us on a daily basis, the Ayers thing might have gotten legs, sadly. That said, I don’t know that it would have worked as well as I had initially thought. Not because the general American voter is better than I give them credit for, but because the target audience for racist attacks like this one is generally unmotivated by a boogeyman that is white and named Bill. Had Obama served on an education board with an Abu or a Shabazz that was, dare I say it, also brown, well… maybe the ultra-conservative, hyper-right-wing, racist independents who staunchly (or maybe maverick-ly?) decline to self-identify as Republicans might have been swayed.

Instead, John McCain’s total shedding of all dignity has led high-profile Republican elected officials to reject his campaign for the stupid bile factory it has become. Some of them are probably motivated by nothing more than being dragged down into electoral history as a loser by John McCain, but I have no doubt that a great many Republicans who champion fiscally conservative principles (and have likely never been at the bit of bigotry thinly veiled as social conservatism) are disgusted by what the presidential ticket has driven their party to become. If I were a Republican for whatever reason, I would be ashamed that a large contingent of my party were bigoted enough to believe that all Muslims or Arabs are bad or incapable of decency, or ignorant enough to think that Muslims or Arabs can’t also be citizens of the United States, or outright dumb enough to say half of the shit these people say on their way in to a McCain / Palin rally. The social conservative hardcore right wing base of the Republican Party is ruining the Republican Party for the rest of the Republican Party, possibly forever.

I thought I was appalled at the lengths to which Rove took Bush’s campaign in 2004, but what we see today is an incredible new horizon of craven horrors. Men that care very little about anything other than gaining and seeking power have concocted a campaign that whips thousands of people into a frenzy of rage. When I watch these rallies, where Republican voters scream out things like “Kill Him!” about the Democratic Party’s nominee for President of the United States, I am reminded of the mad dog, driven by equal parts abject terror and blind fury, that bites a stranger after a week of being stoned and tormented by mean kids.

It is sad and it depresses me but I am starting to believe that partisanship has advanced to real hatred on the Republican side, and I squarely blame John McCain and Sarah Palin – and by extension, Karl Rove – for it. This isn’t a spirited policy disagreement. This isn’t someone who thinks all Democrats will raise his taxes, or even talks about the creeping threat of socialism. This is hatred, inspired by fear. We know that a great many Republicans elected to office in this generation are fearmongers that abuse their power. We did not know for certain what depths their behavior could reach, but now we’re beginning to see it.

To be fair, I know plenty of Democratic activists that would never, ever vote for a Republican, and I even know some that think Republicans can’t be trusted as a rule, or that maybe the A-Team from the Bush administration deserves to go to prison for what they’ve done. I have seen disappointment, and frustration, and indignation, and outrage, deserved or not.

In my short time in political involvement, though, I have never seen a naked, stupid hatred for Republicans. I have never once heard someone yell “Kill Him!” when a Republican’s name is mentioned. I don’t know anyone that would openly advocate violence against anyone, let alone against political opponents.

Every day I observe violence being incited at Republican rally after Republican rally – and don’t kid yourself, if you think Sarah Palin’s words or John McCain’s campaign aren’t being heard as calls to war by some of their supporters, you are ignoring large swaths of political history in which scary things happened as a result of kinder language broadcast with a far smaller media budget.

The best analogy I can think of right now is this: I am a lifelong Boston Red Sox fan, and during the 2004 MLB playoffs, a New York Yankees fan was pulled into a van near Fenway Park and murdered by Red Sox fans. It was an amazing time to be a Red Sox fan, but when I think of 2004, instead of the Sox breaking the curse and winning the World Series, I think of the stupid people that did the unimaginable thing and killed someone. I’m ashamed and I wish it had never happened.

Do you think that guy who yelled “Kill Him!” about Barack Obama at a McCain / Palin rally will feel the same way if their rhetoric results in political violence and someone gets hurt? Do you think any of the people who really believe that Obama is a “one man sleeper cell” or a terrorist would feel ashamed or wish it hadn’t happened?

There’s no artful way to say it: I’m frightened by this behavior, and even more frightened by the fact that every condition that might make things worse exists all around us right now. And I’m not sure what could fix it.

Standing there was a man in a suit and a woman in a dress. They had literature. As we are coming up on a national election, I figured they were either Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Republicans, or Democrats. Or possibly Obamacans. They were too old to vote for Ron Paul.

“Oh, you have your little puppy there,” the man said, obviously offput by the fact that I was holding a dog. It may also have been my appearance. I hadn’t showered yet and was in my workout clothes, and if you’ve ever seen what my hair does when I sleep, you would know that if not for the fact that I answered the door from inside what is ostensibly my home, I appeared to be homeless.

“We just have some information for you,” said the woman. They were both kindly enough up until this point, but the woman thrust the pamphlet into my hands and said, too loudly, “Who really rules the world?!” Those words were printed on the pamphlet, but her verve told me they were also in her heart and mind.

“Okay,” I mumbled, looking at the pamphlet and seeing Jesus throwing up the dis to a pair of obviously malevolent, disembodied hands trying to fork over the National Mall.

“Just an interesting question for you to ponder,” said the man.  “Could Satan  have offered Jesus all the world’s governments if they didn’t belong  to him?”

“Belong to Satan?” I asked.

“Yesssssss,” intoned the woman. “The world’s governments are in Satan’s hands!”

Maybe they are voting for Ron Paul, I thought, and smiled a little.

“Does what we say ring true?” the man said, encouraged by my facial expression. He took a steep forward, making his best Barry Sanders break for daylight.

I said, “Let me leave you with this, wanderers. I’d like to give your church $30,000.”

The woman gasped. “How wonderful!” exclaimed the man.

“I also have bad news for you. I just offered you something that I don’t have, and can’t actually give you.”

The silence was stony, and I sensed any shot I had at a free copy of The Watchtower slipping away.

“We’ll just leave that with you then,” said the man.  I closed the door.